USA - 26 New York firehouses have been forced to close after firefighters refused to get vaccinated, as seven-year-old dies in blaze and union warns lives are at risk. A total of 26 New York firehouses have been forced to close after firefighters refused to get vaccinated ahead of Mayor Bill de Blasio's Monday deadline - and a seven-year-old boy died the following day as departments saw major staff shortages. The Uniformed Firefighters Association revealed a list of FDNY stations that 'have close due to no manpower' and it includes six in Manhattan, nine in Brooklyn, three in Queens, four in the Bronx and four in Staten Island. On Friday FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro warned that the effects of the closures could be catastrophic and 'endanger the lives' of city residents. A day later Robert Resto, 7, was killed and his 54-year-old grandmother were seriously hurt after a deadly blaze engulfed their Washington Heights home around 1.30am Saturday. All municipal workers have been ordered to show proof of at least one dose of the vaccine by 5pm Friday or risk being placed on unpaid leave come Monday.

GERMANY - In the midst of negotiations to form a new governing coalition in Berlin, Germany’s federal government is threatening Russia with the use of nuclear weapons. In an interview with Deutschlandfunk last Thursday, incumbent Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democrats, CDU) said, “We have to make it very clear to Russia that in the end — and that is also the deterrent doctrine — we are ready to use such means [nuclear weapons] so that it has a deterrent effect beforehand and nobody gets the idea, for example, to attack NATO partners in the areas over the Baltic states or in the Black Sea. That is the core idea of NATO, this alliance, and it will be adapted to the current behaviour of Russia.” The fact that Kramp-Karrenbauer speaks of the use of nuclear weapons against Russia without blinking an eye gives harrowing insight into the state of mind at the highest levels of the German state.

UK - After months of death threats, bullying, and abuse from students and staff, common sense hero and philosophy professor Kathleen Stock has resigned from her job, refusing to cave on the nonsense notion that ‘trans women are women’. Kathleen Stock has had enough. One of Britain’s most prominent radical feminists, she has quit her post, and in the process shamed the timid academics in charge at the University of Sussex. Stock argues against the critical theory on gender construct that natal sex and gender identity are two separate things. The critical theory fundamentally holds that the gender identity of a person is defined not by what is between their legs, but what is between their ears. That doctors identifying babies at birth as either male or female are only taking a guess at the gender that at best is 50 percent right, because those babies are yet to choose the gender they really want. Truly, this is how mad it gets, and that’s why Stock begs to differ. “In the vast majority of cases, sex is not assigned at birth, but detected – in most cases via observation at birth and in a few cases later on,” she writes in ‘Material Girls’. “Sex cannot be ‘resassigned’ though surgery or a change in legal status, nor ‘changed’.”

UK - A brave feminist professor’s forensic takedown of the illogical claim that ‘trans women are women’. Philosopher Kathleen Stock, in her new book ‘Material Girls’, fights back against the ‘immersed fiction’ of trans activists who ignore reality and push gender identity theory to the detriment of women and girls. It’s an alarming sign of the times that the first foray into public debate of the UK’s new head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has been to defend an individual’s right to think what they like without fear of being punished for those thoughts.

USA - Nothing screams “Halloween!” like Disney giving kids the chance to explore ‘gender fluidity’ with ‘queer role models.’ This begs the question: where do we draw the line between corporate virtue signaling and pedophilia? This week, it was revealed that Disney is hosting a drag-queen story hour for the children of its employees. The virtual Halloween-themed event will capture “the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood,” while giving impressionable youngsters “glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models,” according to Disney emails seen by Breitbart News.

USA - A Florida school board member received backlash this week after she took an elementary school class on a field trip to a gay bar with suggestive menu items. Broward school board member Sarah Leonardi posted photos of the school trip on Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday which showed the masked children sitting inside the rainbow-themed bar. “I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone Wilton Manors Elementary’s field trip to the incredible Rosie’s! The students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community!” Leonardi wrote, before thanking the bar “for hosting this special field trip every year” – an indication that it was not the first time such a trip took place. Leonardi’s post angered many people on social media, who questioned why children were being taken to an adult, alcohol-oriented venue for a school trip instead of a more appropriate location like a museum or the zoo.

USA - International Man: Western countries are leading the charge in restructuring their economies around the issue of climate change. They’re committed to a comprehensive agenda to “decarbonize” their economies by 2050. What’s your take on this? Doug Casey: To sum it up in one word, it’s insane. In two words, it’s criminally insane.

UK - COP26 (Conference of the Parties) will see the world's most influential politicians gather in Glasgow this year, where they will join forces in a bid to solve the snowballing climate crisis. What does COP26 stand for, and what are the four aims of the conference? Approximately 30,000 delegates will attend the COP26 conference next week, alongside leaders from some of the world's richest nations. Those delegates represent businesses, NGOs, faith groups and much more. Their conversations over the next two weeks could determine the future of the planet.

SWITZERLAND - The Great Reset is just the latest instalment of the grand agenda to completely reorder global society by the end of the 21st century. Prior to the Great Reset for instance, the United Nations (UN) Agenda 21 was adopted by 178 governments in Rio in 1992, taking the form of a “comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which humanity impacts on the environment.”

SWITZERLAND - The wealthy elite travel to the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings via a “steady stream” of private planes and helicopters to discuss issues like global sustainability. By 2050, it’s estimated that aviation will contribute 22% of global carbon emissions; still, in 2019, more than 600 private planes arrived at the Davos Forum, and that doesn’t include the military planes that transported an additional 60 presidents and prime ministers. Jet-setters are carbon super-emitters; the idea that the elite can continue to pollute but simply purchase carbon credits to “offset” their pollution is a matter of smoke and mirrors.

UK - The great ecological delusion: Costly heat pumps that barely work, electric cars recharged by diesel generators... but what if the cash spent on flawed schemes went on new green tech that REALLY worked? Today, 120 world leaders and 30,000 delegates will start arriving in Glasgow for the Cop26 climate change conference. Watching from afar will be Bjorn Lomborg, the former Greenpeace activist who, in his acclaimed 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist, concluded that the costly measures being dreamed up by politicians, scientists and businessmen have proved next to useless.

VATICAN - In a message recorded exclusively for the BBC, Pope Francis has called on world leaders meeting next week at the UN Climate conference in Glasgow to provide "effective responses" to the environment emergency and offer "concrete hope" to future generations. Speaking from the Vatican for BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day, the Pope talked of crises including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and economic difficulties, and urged the world to respond to them with vision and radical decisions, so as not to "waste opportunities" that the current challenges present. "We can confront these crises by retreating into isolationism, protectionism and exploitation," the pontiff said, "or we can see in them a real chance for change."

CHINA - Communist China’s contribution to the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, was an emissions “pledge” that proposed increasing China’s pollution output over the next few years. Chinese dictator Xi Jinping still claims his country will somehow reverse these trends in a very short period of time and become “carbon neutral” before 2060.

USA - Facebook has taken the decision to change its company name to Meta. The change comes after Facebook faced a blackout for a number of hours just a few weeks ago. Facebook was not the only social media site that went down at the start of this month. Their associated sites, Instagram and WhatsApp, also went down for a number of hours as users could not access their accounts. Speaking about the change to being called Meta, Mark Zuckerberg said: "Today we are seen as a social media company. "But in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people." A tweet from the Facebook Newsroom read: "Today we're introducing Meta, which brings together our apps and technologies under a new company brand. "Learn more about how we’re helping build the metaverse and other news from Connect."